Happy spring! Meteorological spring begins today

Looking back at a wet December, January, February

ROANOKE, Va. – "Real" spring, astronomical spring, is still a few weeks away, but for record-keeping purposes in the weather world, spring begins today with the first day of March. The seasons are broken up a little differently for record keeping so there is an even three-month period to record the weather.

December, January and February, the three-month period of meteorological winter, just wrapped up. As you may imagine, it was pretty wet. Roanoke saw its seventh wettest meteorological winter on record.

February as a whole was wet for everyone. Several cities jumped into the top-five wettest February of all time.

In Roanoke, it rained 84 hours of the possible 672 hours in the month of February, more than doubling the average.

While it was wet, most of the precipitation came in the form of rain and ice.

Looking ahead, snow is still possible, of course. The "big one" can still occur in March, but average snow across the region starts to take a hit.

March gives a jump in the average temperature department of 10 degrees by the end of the month. The biggest thing you will notice is the increase in daylight. We'll gain 72 more hours of it through the next 30 days. Of course we will also move the clocks AHEAD an hour in less than two weeks, giving us more of that daylight in the evening.

Copyright 2019 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.

About the Author:

Jonathan Kegges joined the News 6 team in June 2019 as the Weekend Morning Meteorologist. Jonathan comes from Roanoke, Virginia where he covered three EF-3 tornadoes and deadly flooding brought on by Hurricanes Florence and Michael.